Prof. Allan Rosenfield was the Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, DeLamar Professor of Public Health and professor of obstetrics and gynecology. Earlier in his career, following an M.D. from Columbia, he worked first in Nigeria as an obstetrician and then in Thailand as Population Council Representative and advisor to the Ministry of Public Health for family planning and maternal/child health. Dr. Rosenfield is a member of the boards of the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Packard Foundation and serves on advisory committees to other national foundations, including the Dyson Foundation and the Open Society Institute (Soros). Previously he has served as president of the New York Obstetrical Society, president of the Association of Schools of Public Health, chair of the Executive Board of APHA, chair of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of WHO's Human Reproduction Programme, and chair of the Boards of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Dr. Rosenfield is currently chairman of the NYS Department of Health AIDS Advisory Council, and chair of AmFAR's Public Policy Committee. He has received several honors and written extensively on domestic and international issues in the fields of population, women's reproductive health, human rights, and health policy.

Allan Rosenfield, dean emeritus of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and a pioneer in maternal health, family planning, and HIV/AIDS research, passed away on the morning of October 12th, 2008 from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“He was a really phenomenal man who was a visionary and completely dedicated. This is no ordinary scientist or administrator,” said Andrew Davidson, the Vice Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health. “We have a leader who was not afraid to be an advocate. We have a leader who was not afraid to move into a global context. We have a leader who was not afraid to take on issues that society often differed strongly about. A very large portion of the University’s global health research is focused in the School of Public Health because of Allan Rosenfield.”

This was one of this last On-Camera Interviews.